Thicker Than Water
by WhiteIce
Summary: The Kane's family fortune is in trouble when criminals decide to kidnap a Kane child and hold them for ransom. They decide that Veronica is the perfect target after hearing the rumors that she is Jake Kane's daughter. But whether they share the same blood or not, Veronica will always be Keith's daughter. And they won't be separated without a fight. Set in Season 1.
1. Prologue

_I don't own Veronica Mars. This is set in the time of Season 1._

_Hope you guys like the fic!_

* * *

_**Prologue**_

On the outside, it seemed like the perfect plan.

Oh sure, they had heard rumors about the girl being the daughter of a P.I. An investigator who was good with a gun, and an even better tracker after all his years on the force. They knew several people who had been put away by Keith Mars, and it seemed even better then. The plan was foolproof, so why not also get the added benefit of pissing off the most hated P.I. in town? Hell, by kidnapping his smart mouthed daughter, they'd be heroes.

But people just kept warning them. Don't trust the girl, everybody said. She's dangerous.

She was five foot one. If you had tripled her weight, it couldn't have matched up to their combined ones. Her muscle mass was virtually non existent. The only problems were the taser and the dog. Knock her away from the taser, drug the dog. Easy.

But still the warnings kept coming. She was a spy for her father. She was responsible for solving at least half the cases that came their way. She had learned everything she knew from him. And her father adored her.

It wasn't as though they had been the first to think of kidnapping the daughter. Keith Mars had been singlehandedly responsible for putting away some of Neptune's most elusive criminals. Most of them had thought of grabbing the kid every once and awhile. Hide her away, watch Keith Mars sweat for a change. But no matter how many times they had said they were going to do it, nobody ever got around to it. Why?

Keith Mars scared the shit out of most of them.

He had put away criminals, tracking them endlessly and waiting for them to slip up, make a mistake. He was always there when they did. And that was without the added factor of taking away the most important person in his world.

There were rumors once that someone had tried to grab her when she was 5 years old. Trying to hold her hostage to get a lesser prison sentence for their brother. At age 5 the girl had screamed so loudly the entire neighborhood was outside in less than a minute, and the kidnapping was impossible. Keith Mars had found the man two hours later, and nobody heard from him again.

He was probably just in solitary, away in a prison somewhere.

Probably.

But those were just rumors, and Drew and Nick didn't believe any of them. Besides, even if they were true, Keith had been kicked out of the police force. He didn't have half the resources that he used to. The fact that he was a P.I. now actually helped, as it require him to leave his daughter alone for long hours at a time. Days even.

And the girl was the easiest target. Duncan Kane was too well surrounded constantly. By security, by family, by friends. Breaking into his house would be like trying to storm a fort. Taking the girl would require them to just kick in a weak door in a seedy neighborhood and grab her. They'd drag her out, take her away, and make a very public demand for money.

Jake Kane would have to pay up, even if he didn't give a rat's ass about his mistress' kid. Public approval would fall once people realized that Jake Kane had an affair with Lianne Mars. Public approval would plummet if he refused to pay his own daughter's random.

He'd pay the ransom, they'd get millions, and they'd figure out what to do with Veronica Mars later. If she behaved, they'd probably return her in one piece.

Probably.


	2. Chapter 1

**Soooo...how 'bout that Veronica Mars movie? Don't worry, you won't get any spoilers here from me, and there won't be any spoilers in the story, considering it's set around the middle of Season 1. I'll just let you know that I thought it was great, and leave it at that. **

**Thanks for all your reviews, and follows, and favs! You guys are awesome!**

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Before Veronica Mars was abducted, it had been a beautiful night.

She had been enjoying it, actually. The window was open, letting in a soft breeze that played with her hair and the papers in the Mars' office. For once, instead of photographing adulterers or spying on her classmates, she had been doing her actual job: filing paperwork.

This was mainly due to the fact that her father had called to check in, and she wanted to be somewhere non-sleazy to chat with him. Not surprisingly, it was hard to concentrate on talking when you were right outside the Camelot, waiting to photograph a cheating husband. That, as well as the fact that she had a test on The Sound and the Fury in AP English the next day, meant that Veronica was content to stay at the office for once.

Backup lay at her feet, happy to slobber and demolish a chew toy. Wallace was coming over the next day for pizza and a movie to keep her company while her dad was away. Logan hadn't been an annoying asshole at school that day.

The world was good.

That thought lasted twenty seconds in Veronica's mind before the door was slammed open. The lock scattered across the floor, broken into dozens of pieces. The glass pane in the door shattered, leaving only a few shards left in the door. In the destroyed doorway stood two huge men with guns.

And people wondered why Veronica was a pessimist.

One hand shot into the hand while the other made its way under the desk, rooting for the taser she had placed in the top drawer. At her feet, Backup growled, chew toy forgotten.

"Hello there gentlemen. Have you come for our fine services today?" Veronica tried to keep her calm. "My father is in his office, but he'll be out in a minute -"

"You father's currently about 50 miles from the Mexican border, trying to catch a bail jumper." Veronica felt her stomach sink as the man spoke. They had been doing their homework. Great.

"Well then, whatever you want, I am fully willing to cooperate..." She said, fingers curled around her taser.

The two men stared at her, one smirking, the other scowling.

"Hands behind your head. Now." The one with the smirk spoke, stepping forward.

"Sure." Veronica said, trying to think fast. "I'll just -"

"Now." The man cocked his gun and Veronica felt her courage begin to drain away. She lowered herself to the ground, hiding the taser on the floor behind the desk. She settled herself next to the desk, hands behind her head.

"You should know that this is my father's office. He's a P.I. If I don't check in with him, he'll get worried and have people looking for me. He has connections in the sheriff's department." She wanted to say more, but felt her throat close up as the smirking man walked towards her.

"He checks up on you, but you just finished calling him a half-hour ago, didn't you?" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe. Veronica felt her stomach completely drop out.

"Backup, now!" She screamed, and dropped to the floor as the dog leapt over her and at the smirking man. She reached for the taser and brought it up just in time to see Backup sink his teeth in the hand holding the syringe. Veronica leapt forward and jammed her taser up against the man's stomach. He fell to the ground, the electricity and dog bite making him crumple. She turned, taser extended, only to scream as a gunshot ripped through the air.

Backup crumpled to the ground.

"Noooooo..." Veronica whimpered, staring at her beloved dog. She wanted to scream, to shout, to do something, but her throat was suddenly closed up.

"Shut up." She was hauled to her feet by the second man. "I only shot his leg."

Veronica looked and saw that in her panic she had missed that Backup's chest was moving up and down rapidly. He was whimpering quietly. She tried to go to him, but was held up by her captor.

"We should kill him." The first man, no longer smirking, got up from the floor. "He'll start barking soon, and alert someone. And it'll send a message that we're not screwing around."

"No, don't hurt him." Veronica said. "I'll go with you, just don't hurt..." Her voice faded as the syringe was jabbed into her neck; she felt her body go limp. Before she could feel any surprise, her eyes closed and she faded from consciousness.

* * *

It took 20 hours for anyone to notice that Veronica Mars had gone missing.

Even though Keith Mars would never accept it, in his desperation and grief believing that there was something more he could have done, it was really just a series of unfortunate coincidences that were responsible for someone not knowing.

Keith tried to check up with his daughter at least once a day when he went out of town. He had checked in twice the day Veronica disappeared. It was after she had hung up from his second call that she was abducted. The following day, he didn't call in the morning or early afternoon, knowing that Veronica had school. He chased his bail jumper until 4 in the afternoon, when he finally tried to give Veronica a call. When she didn't pick up at 4, he wasn't too worried. She was probably out on a case or doing homework. When she didn't pick up at 5, he began to get a little nervous. He called Wallace to check on her.

Wallace had planned to see Veronica that night at the Mars' apartment at 6. He promised to give Keith a call once he got there to confirm that Veronica was alright. When Veronica didn't show up at her apartment after a solid 5 minutes of knocking, he went over to the Mars' office, figuring she had been caught up in a case. It was what he had assumed since she had failed to show up at school. He hadn't been worried then, or even when he was waiting at the apartment. Veronica getting too involved in a case and forgetting everything else was common.

It wasn't until Wallace saw the smashed door of Mars Investigations, and the bloody Backup that lay inside, that he suddenly panicked.

By that time it was 7:00 at night.

Keith Mars was on the 7:30 flight out to Neptune. He hoped that it had just been a mistake: that maybe it was a cruel prank, or a case of someone attacking just his office.

When the plane landed in Neptune, all he had to greet him was a destroyed office, a nearly dead dog, and a police force that had no clue what they were doing.

* * *

When it came to holding someone hostage, abandoned buildings were all the rage. Abandoned houses, on the other hand... That was slightly better. Still pretty cliche, though.

Veronica probably would have told her kidnappers that, if she could speak. Whatever they had injected into her left her unable to move. She could barely think, either, her thoughts only becoming somewhat coherent as the drug would begin to wear off. But she only had a few moments of lucidness, as whenever she could sense herself getting better, they would inject her with a syringe again.

She tried to memorize her captors, so she could identify them out of a lineup if she needed to. Through the haze of drugs, all she could make out was that they were both extremely tall, well built, and had brown hair. She tried to make herself concentrate, tried to focus, but it was impossible. She felt like her detective skills had been locked away in a part of her mind that she no longer had access to.

She drifted in and out, attempting to figure out what was happening. At one point she got flashes of a video camera and a gun. But as she attempted to focus, it became too much for her and she blacked out.


End file.
